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Issues Facing Missions Today 12:
Who’s Christianity? What
Church? Which Mission?
What follows is a simple post, but one that needs
to be stated repeatedly. When assessing
missions—who is doing what, and what should be done—we simply have to ask hard
questions. We have to ask, ‘Who’s
Christianity? What Church? Which Mission?’ Failure to do so might easily lead to support
and involvement in what is actually not Christian (even if some good things are
done), enabling what is actually not the Church, and planning what is not
helpful in Christian missions.
This concern regularly shows up in the use of
statistics in missions and ministry.
Statistics are potentially and often are misleading because categories are confused
and data is misinterpreted. One needs to
define such terms as ‘Christianity,’ ‘Church,’ and ‘mission’ before reporting
statistics on the Church and missions, and one must engage in detailed
assessment of statistics rather than reach quick conclusions based on suc…

Issues
Facing Missions Today 11: Three Suggestions for Local Church Mission Programmes
In this blog post, I want to offer three suggestions
for local churches as they think about their mission programmes. These are by no means exhaustive, and I
intend to offer more suggestions at a later time. My three suggestions are that the local
church needs a (1) ‘world mission’ perspective, a (2) ‘Gospel’ perspective, and
a (3) ‘missionary’ perspective. 1. The local
church needs a ‘world mission’ perspective.
That is, missions should not be reduced to the doing of ministry, such
that it might just as well be done around the block rather than overseas. A world perspective ties the local church
into the long and deep missional narrative of Scripture: there is One God who
wants all people to be saved. Luke,
e.g., repeatedly uses Isaiah 49.6 in his two volume work of Luke and Acts in
reference to the disciples/church’s ministry.
It says, "It is too light a thing that you [God’s Servant] sho…

Issues Facing Missions Today 10: The Seminary and the Loss
of MissionIntroduction
The issue of the vibrancy of western ‘missions’—missiology
and mission practice—in our day is a topic I took up in my first article in
this series on ‘Issues Facing Missions Today.’
That blog posting has received about 1,000 hits and daily receives more
still. So it seems appropriate to revisit
the issue from time to time. To be sure, my first post was a
sweeping statement in defense of the claim that the Church in the west is
losing mission today--more needs to be said.
For those who found this interesting, engaging, or
frustrating, perhaps two references will help.
One is an online video reflection on my post on ‘The Loss of Mission’ by
Dr. Jon Shuler of the North American Mission Society (http://www.cross.tv/108095). The other resource is an article some may already have read: Dana L. Robert, ‘Forty Years of North American
Missiology: A Brief Review,’ International
Bulletin of Missionary Research …